Professor Britta van Beers (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Britta van Beers is professor of Biolaw and Bioethics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Law, Department of Legal Theory. She teaches and writes about the legal–philosophical aspects of the governance of new technologies. She is particularly intrigued by the legal and legal-philosophical meaning(s) of concepts such as person, humanity and dignity against the backdrop of developments in human genetics and reproductive technologies, and more recently also in neurotechnology and Artificial Intelligence. Of special interest to her are the symbolic dimensions and functions of the law within these regulatory contexts.
Professor David Gunkel (Northern Illinois University, United States)
David J. Gunkel(PhD Philosophy) is an award-winning educator, researcher, and author, specializing in the philosophy of technology with a focus on the moral and legal challenges of artificial intelligence and robots. He is the author of over 115 scholarly articles and has published seventeen books, including The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics (MIT Press 2012), Robot Rights (MIT Press 2018), and Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond (MIT Press 2023. He currently holds the position of Presidential Research, Scholarship and Artistry Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University (USA) and professor of applied ethics at Łazarski University in Warsaw, Poland.
Professor Tomasz Pietrzykowski (University of Silesia, Poland)
Tomasz Pietrzykowski is a professor of law specializing in legal theory and philosophy of law. He lectures at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Silesia in Katowice and is the Head of the Research Center for Public Policy and Regulatory Governance. His publications cover an intersection of law with bioethics, philosophy, medicine, and public policy. He is also a former chairman of the Polish National Ethics Committee for Animal Experimentation and the deputy chairman of the Bioethics Committee of the Silesian Medical Chamber. His recent books include ‘Personhood Beyond Humanism. Animals, Chimeras, Autonomous Agents and the Law’ (2018) and ‘The Foundations of Animal Law. Concepts – Principles – Dilemmas’ (2023).
Academic Committee:
Dr. Felix Aiwanger is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg and lecturer at Bucerius Law School. After completing his doctoral studies at the University of Munich, he was legal advisor to the State Animal Protection Commissioner at the Berlin Senate Department for Justice and Consumer Protection. He is a member of the German Association for Animal Protection Law and serves on the editorial board of the Journal for Animal Law, Ethics and One Health. His current research focuses on the legal status and representation of animals from comparative perspectives.
Dr. Diana Mocanu is a postdoctoral researcher working on the challenges that AI systems pose to the legal notion of agency in the framework of the ERC Project LEGACY on Agency in Law, currently under way at the Faculty of Law at Helsinki University, Finland. Previously she defended her PhD with a thesis on the legal status of AI systems in the EU at the Université Catholique de Louvain, in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Dr. Tomislav Nedić is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Osijek, Faculty of Law (Chair of Civil and Civil Procedure Law). He earned his Ph.D in law at the University of Osijek and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Zagreb. Tomislav also held visiting researcher positions at King's College London (2023) and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (2024). He teaches civil law and also does courses in medical ethics and legal philosophy. Presently, his research delves into the criteria for distinguishing personhood and thinghood concepts in private law, (bio)ethics, and legal theory, particularly concerning human body parts and animals.
Organizing Committee
- Dr. Eva Bernet Kempers
- Prof. Kristof Van Assche
- Prof. Britt Weyts
- Prof. Nicolas Carette
- Prof. Frederik Swennen
- Prof. Renate Barbaix
- Prof. Elise Goossens
- Prof. Thierry Vansweevelt